Old Town Trestle Nature Trail in Dixie County, Florida

Photograph: Old Town Nature Coast Trail SP Suwannee south03.jpg by Ebyabe · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Restored from the credited Wikimedia Commons file, normalized to the consistent attraction-card frame and converted to WebP by 1stFlorida.com. Portrait originals retain their complete composition over a softly blurred extension of the same photograph.

Dixie County attraction

Old Town Trestle Nature Trail

Dixie County · North Florida & First Coast

A short walk out of Old Town onto a red steel railroad bridge of 1902 standing over the Suwannee River.

ABOUT THIS PLACE

The Suwannee River trestle at Old Town, known as the Drew Bridge, is a red steel span put up in the early 1900s to carry people and goods over one of the largest rivers in Florida. It ran 1,335 feet, with a 150-foot swing span in the middle that could be turned by hand so steamboats could pass; a key went into the gear above the round pier, and horses or donkeys did the pulling. The American Bridge Company, part of U.S. Steel, built and maintained it across most of the twentieth century. When the line closed, the bridge became part of the Nature Coast State Trail, and it is now the part of that trail people go out of their way to see. Getting there takes no effort and no bicycle. A short walk from Old Town puts you on the deck, which is why the state describes it as reachable by anyone, whether or not they ride. From the middle of the bridge the river runs below in both directions, open water and cypress on the banks. Depending on the season, white-tailed deer, wild turkey, gopher tortoises, Gulf sturgeon and manatees all turn up here. The sunken steamboat City of Hawkinsville lies about a hundred yards downstream of the trestle

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗Official place website ↗

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